Tag Archive: VMware

There are over 200 blogs dedicated to VMware and virtualization, here’s your chance to pick your favorites and determine the top blogs. The last voting was a year ago and new bloggers are springing up every month. When casting your votes please keep the following in mind about the blogs.

Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their life.

Length – It’s easy to make a quick blog post without much content, nothing wrong with this as long as you have good content in the post that people will enjoy. But some bloggers post pretty long detailed posts which takes a lot of time and effort to produce. The tip of the hat goes to these guys that burn the midnight oil trying to get you some great detailed information.

Frequency – Some bloggers post several times a week which provides readers with lots of content. This requires a lot of effort as bloggers have to come up with more content ideas to write about. Frequency ties into length, some do high frequency/low length, some do low frequency/high length, some do both. They’re all good and require a lot of time and effort on the bloggers part.

Quality – It all comes down to whats in the blog post regardless of how often or how long the blog posts are. After reading a blog post if you come away with learning something that you did not previously know and it benefits you in some way then you know you are reading a quality post. Good quality is usually the result of original content, its easy to re-hash something previously published elsewhere, the good bloggers come up with unique content or put their own unique spin on popular topics.

So please take all this into account when casting your votes, here are some more details on the voting:

You can pick 10 of your favorite blogs and also rank them in your order of preference after you pick your 10. The results will be weighted with #1 ranking getting 10 points and #10 rankings getting 1 point. Point totals will be tabulated and from them the top 50 will be determined.

Blogs are listed on the ballot in alphabetical order, the current top 50 blogs are highlighted with their current ranking in parentheses, the current top 10 are also bolded so they stand out. So please go through the whole list when making your choices (Duncan ended up on the bottom).

Again this year we also having voting in special categories to help distinguish certain types of blogs. The choices of which blogs to include in the categories was the result of this survey and my best guessing. I did cut down on some of the categories this year to keep it simple. The categories are independent of the general voting so first pick and rank your top 10 overall favorite blogs and then choose your favorite blog in each category.

Voting will run until 3/1, afterwards the results will be determined and announced on a special vChat episode with myself, Simon Seagrave, David Davis and John Troyer.

Duplicate vote protection is enabled, we’ll be using geolocation, IP addresses & cookies to protect against duplicate votes. This isn’t Chicago, please be honest and fair when voting, any suspicious votes will be tossed.

If you are not familiar with a blog you can click on it in the survey to view it or use my vLaunchpad to see links to them all. Try not to pick blogs based just on names but also take content into account. There are a lot of good blogs currently not in the top 50 that deserve to be there.

So what are you waiting for, head on over and take the survey to cast your ballot and reward the best bloggers for their hard work and dedication by letting them know that you appreciate them.

Every year is an election year at vSphere-land! Voting for the annual virtualization top blog contest will begin in January, all blogs that are listed on my vLaunchpad will be put on the ballot. So if your blog isn’t there, now is the time to let me know about it. If I don’t know about your blog, you won’t be listed and you won’t be included in the voting. So head on over to my vLaunchpad and see if you’re listed and that your website URL and twitter/RSS links are correct. If you’re not on there use this form to let me know about it. Be sure and include your blog name & URL, your name and twitter/RSS links.

One thing to note is that I only keep active blogs listed on the vLaunchpad, so any blogs that have not had any new posts in over 6 months I remove from it. I just went through it and removed over 2 dozen stale blogs from it.

I felt a great disturbance in the force, nah its just VMworld…

If Obi Wan Ken Obi were around he would feel a great disturbance in the force as a large portion of the virtualization talent in the world converges on San Francisco next week for VMworld 2010. This promises to be one of the biggest and best years yet with an estimated 15,000 people attending, lots of great announcements, 9 tracks with 300+ sessions and 20 super sessions. If that ain’t enough there are hundreds of vendors showing off their wares, dozens of great labs to attend and enough parties to keep you entertained from dusk to dawn. This is my 3rd VMworld and I wanted to offer some advice, observations and information that you might find helpful:

The sessions, so many to choose from, so little time, you’ll be lucky if you can attend more than a dozen of them. They’re just so much other stuff to do there its hard to find time to go to sessions. I recommend you pick a few that you really want to see and don’t sweat it if you miss some, remember they’re all recorded and you have plenty of time to see them after VMworld. I usually choose based on certain people that I want to hear speak and meet after the session. After all you can always hear the session later but you can’t meet the speaker after VMworld is over. This year their is no mandatory registration for sessions, anyone can show up and its first come first serve until the room is filled.

The labs, always pretty hectic to get into them but this year they made them bigger and better. Gone are the instructor-led labs and they are are now all self-paced. They are also ran from servers in a big cloud somewhere instead of being on-site which should be better because they have much more time to setup and test everything before the event instead of trying to rapidly put it all together at Moscone.

The parties, there are no shortage of them and trying to pick and choose which ones you want to attend can be even more challenging than picking sessions to see. There is a pretty comprehensive list of them here. Sunday is the big warm-up party at the Thirsty Bear, you have to register to get in (its already closed) but if you try going later (after 8:00pm) they may have some room for anyone to go in. Monday is the opening Welcome Reception in the Solutions Exchange, food, beer & vendors, a good way to start the evening. Afterwards we are having the official VMworld tweetup from 9:00pm – 11:00pm, space is limited so RSVP if you want to attend, this should be a real fun event. Finally on Monday evening if you are into stogies, a group of us are going to smoke them after 11:00pm at a local cigar bar, RSVP here. You can’t smoke anywhere in San Fran so if you like cigars come along. Tuesday seems to be the day every vendor throws a party, so pick the ones you want to go to and hop between them. Personally I’m going to try and make it to 3-4 of them including the Veeam party which is always great. Contact your vendors if you don’t have invites and they should be able to get you one. Wednesday is the big official VMworld party with INXS playing this year, don’t look all over the place outside in the Yerba Buena gardens as the band doesn’t play there, they play indoors in the same area as the keynotes are held.

The networking, that’s what VMworld is all about, don’t be a hermit and don’t be afraid to talk to people. People like Mike Laverick, Jason Boche, Scott Lowe and Duncan Eppingaren’t surrounded by security guards and are down to earth guys who will talk to anyone. So go say high, introduce yourself and have a conversation, you’ll be very glad you did so afterwards. Don’t know where to find people? Well parties are a good place to start, everyone seems to gravitate there. Do yourself a favor and get on twitter if you’re not already and you’ll know in real time whats going on. You can see a full list of people tweeting and blogging here and see real time feeds of tweets here, the official VMworld hashtag is #vmworld.

Plan your trip appropriately, you’re going to be on your feet a lot at VMworld, you better have comfortable shoes or you’re going to have real sore feet. Pack light if you can, you might want to being an extra bag, there are lots of prize giveaways and free swag all over the place so I can almost guarantee you’re going to go home with more than you came with. If you’re going to walk around with a back pack don’t stuff it too much, its going to get awfully heavy after wearing it a few hours. I travel light and don’t want a full laptop to lug around, I bring a netbook, iPad and iPhone and choose the one I want to carry for what I need to do at the time. Don’t forget power, especially for your iPhone, I carry 3 battery packs so I can charge it as needed without an outlet. Wi-fi coverage at Moscone is so-so and 3G in San Fran is always bad and will probably be even worse at VMworld due to an additional 5,000 or so iPhones/iPads all fighting for service.

Set your priorities and expectations ahead of time, VMworld has plenty to offer and you’ll get as much out of it as you put into it. Sessions are at the bottom of the priority list for me, things like networking and going through the Solutions Exchange are at the top. If you make a schedule it will be challenging to keep it as there are plenty of distractions at VMworld. Be realistic and don’t try and cram your schedule so full that you stress yourself out and are rushing to get to everything. Relax, enjoy yourself and have fun.

VMware makes a point to show off their talent at VMworld, this means those geeky developers that are normally locked up all day making the next version of vSphere are there and usually available to talk to. What better person to ask your HA question than someone who actually developed the feature. VMware has lots of other smart people there so be sure and check out the VMware booths in the Solutions Exchange to meet them. Also new this year are knowledge experts that you can schedule one-on-one facetime with. It’s not just VMware that has their smartest and brightest at the show though, most of the vendors do also so go by your favorite vendors and talk them up and get your questions answered.

The Solutions Exchange is like a Super Walmart, everything you can possibly need for VMware products all under one roof, take your time, stroll around and I guarantee you’ll see many cool products that you probably never knew existed. VMware has an incredibly rich ecosystem of vendors that can help solve your pain points and enhance your environment. Do make a point of spending plenty of time there, besides learning a lot you’ll leave with pockets stuffed with vendor swag.

If this is your first time at VMworld or San Fran it can be a bit intimidating, especially when it comes to finding your way around. If you get there on Sunday try and pick up your badge then rather than fight the crowds on Monday. Walking around and trying to get your bearings can help, be sure and use the maps of the Moscone that are published on VMworld.com and in the docs you are given when you check in to see where everything is. If you need information don’t hesitate to ask someone, or even better trying tweeting it and you might get a quick answer. The more social you can be at VMworld especially if its your first time will really help you out as us virtualization folks are a friendly lot that don’t bite and are glad to help out a vComrade.

See San Francisco if you can, there is lots to see in the city, know how to get around ahead of time, BART and the public transportation are great for this. Go see the sea lions at Pier 39 (watch out for the Bush Man), take a boat trip to Alcatraz, see the Muir Woods, Golden Gate or go climb Coit Tower. I have a big list of things to do in San Francisco here.

Know where to go after the action is over, once VMworld closes each day there are plenty of parties, after the parties are over many gather at popular spots. One such spot is the lobby bar of the Marriott Marquis hotel which is 2 blocks from the Moscone. I had many great late night conversations with others there each night after all the parties ended.

VMworld is four short days and will fly by before you know it, so be sure and make the most of it and soak up the incredible amount of knowledge that will be available both formally through labs and sessions and informally through talking to others. Enjoy the show and I hope to meet many of you there

VMworld was last in San Francisco in 2010 having gone back to Vegas in 2011. Back in 2009 I compiled a list of links of things to do in San Francisco that you might find useful this year. Compared to Vegas there is just so much more to see and do and at least you’re not trapped in a hotel all day & night. One of those unique attractions in SF is the famous Bushman, forget booth babes, I would love to see a vendor hire the Bushman for their booth in the Solutions Expo and scare the crap out of virtualization geeks. Here’s the link to my San Francisco link post:

This year it seemed even tougher than ever to get a session approved, I know of many good sessions/speakers that were shot down. VMware has taken over more and more session slots and when you take into account the sessions that they owe sponsors as part of their sponsorships, that leaves not much for everyone else. There are a lot of good bloggers and vExperts that have submitted great session proposals that are now finding it almost impossible to get approved. Part of the problem stems from the fact that VMware has really grown as a company and their product portfolio is getting larger and larger. As a result they have a lot more session areas that they probably need to cover which squeezes out everyone else. Gone are the days of just ESX & vCenter Server being the featured session topics, now we have dozens of other products that they need to cover at VMworld.

It seems like VMworld has gotten too big for it’s britches and steadily completed the transformation into VMwareworld. It’s unfortunate that they do not try and expand it out by adding additional rooms and capacity as they are just shutting out their loyal partners and all the great bloggers, customers and vExperts out there. If you’ve been to VMworld for many years you’ve probably noticed the change yourself. Many people will start to get discouraged and no longer submit session proposals which is unfortunate. VMware really needs to step up and support a non-VMware led conference that allows all the great content & speakers outside of VMware to have a voice like a VMware Technical Exchange.

Was going through the Schedule Builder today and was curious as to the number of sessions for different categories:

Total sessions: 455 (This includes all the different session types)

Sessions by Type:

Breakout Session – 293

CEO Roundtable – 1

Certification Exam – 1

Group Discussion – 56

Hands-on Lab – 36

Meet the Experts – 16

Panel Session – 35

Spotlight Session – 17

Sessions by Days:

Monday – 141

Tuesday – 146

Wednesday – 181

Thursday – 55

Sessions by Technical Level:

Business Solution – 108

Technical – 165

Advanced Technical – 58

I also searched on company keywords for speakers and here were the results:

VMware – 306 (includes sessions that may be shared with other companies)

Cisco – 6

EMC – 6

Dell – 5

NetApp – 4

HP – 4

IBM – 3

Hitachi – 1

As you can see VMware dominates and all the other large companies are getting squeezed out, but hey it’s their show and I guess they can do what they want.

There are over 180 blogs dedicated to VMware virtualization, here’s your chance to pick your favorites and determine the top blogs. The last voting was over a year ago and new bloggers are springing up every month. When casting your votes please keep the following in mind about the blogs.

Longevity – Anyone can start a blog but it requires dedication, time & effort to keep it going. Some bloggers start a blog only to have it fall to the wayside several months later. Things always come up in life but the good bloggers keep going regardless of what is happening in their life.

Length – It’s easy to make a quick blog post without much content, nothing wrong with this as long as you have good content in the post that people will enjoy. But some bloggers post pretty long detailed posts which takes a lot of time and effort to produce. The tip of the hat goes to these guys that burn the midnight oil trying to get you some great detailed information.

Frequency – Some bloggers post several times a week which provides readers with lots of content. This requires a lot of effort as bloggers have to come up with more content ideas to write about. Frequency ties into length, some do high frequency/low length, some do low frequency/high length, some do both. They’re all good and require a lot of time and effort on the bloggers part.

Quality – It all comes down to whats in the blog post regardless of how often or how long the blog posts are. After reading a blog post if you come away with learning something that you did not previously know and it benefits you in some way then you know you are reading a quality post. Good quality is usually the result of original content, its easy to re-hash something previously published elsewhere, the good bloggers come up with unique content or put their own unique spin on popular topics.

So please take all this into account when casting your votes, here are some more details on the voting:

You can pick 10 of your favorite blogs and also rank them in your order of preference after you pick your 10. The results will be weighted with #1 ranking getting 10 points and #10 rankings getting 1 point. Point totals will be tabulated and from them the top 50 will be determined.

Blogs are listed on the ballot in alphabetical order with the current top 25 blogs highlighted in bold & underlined text, so please go through the whole list when making your choices (Duncan ended up on the bottom).

New this year we also having voting in special categories to help distinguish certain types of blogs. The choices of which blogs to include in the categories was the result of this survey and my best guessing. The categories are independent of the general voting so first pick and rank your top 10 overall favorite blogs and then choose your favorite blog in each category.

Voting will run until 2/7, afterwards the results will be determined and announced on a special podcast with myself, Simon Seagrave, David Davis and John Troyer live at VMware Partner Exchange.

Several random voters will be picked to win a copy of the Train Signal’s new vSphere 5 and View 5 video training courses.

Duplicate vote protect is enabled, we’ll be using geolocation, IP addresses & cookies to protect against duplicate votes. This isn’t Chicago, please be honest and fair when voting, any suspicious votes will be tossed.

If you are not familiar with a blog you can use my vLaunchpad to see links to them all. Try not to pick blogs based just on names but also take content into account. There are a lot of good blogs currently not in the top 25 that deserve to be there.

So what are you waiting for, head on over to http://vote.vsphere-land.com to cast your ballot and reward the best bloggers for their hard work and dedication by letting them know that you appreciate them. In case you need it here’s the direct link to the survey as well.

This is my final post highlighting the white papers that I did for SolarWinds. This one focuses on a white paper titled “Capacity Planning in Virtual Environments” which is a topic that is often not very well understood or executed in virtual environments. Capacity planning can be a real challenge in virtual environments and there is a lot more to it than meets the eye, below is an excerpt from this white paper, you can register and read the full paper over at SolarWinds website.

Virtualization is all about the sharing of resources. You have to plan with the big picture in mind and take into account your virtual environment as a whole. A balance of resources is critical in a virtual environment since the server hardware used for virtualization is bigger and more expensive than traditional server hardware as it has to support many virtual machines (VMs) running on it. If resources are unbalanced on a host, it can lead to wasted resources, and since the whole point of virtualization is to make the most efficient use of all resources, this goes against the reasons that we virtualize in the first place. For example, if a host runs out of physical memory, it limits the number of VMs that can run on that host despite having plenty of other resources available to it. Sure, you can use memory over commitment, but performance severely degrades once your VMs start swapping to disk to make up for the lack of physical host memory. As a result, the lack of having enough physical memory available for VMs means that you are wasting resources and money.

Trying to keep your resources balanced isn’t all that simple; you need to look at historical resource trends and usage to determine what that balance point is. Trying to calculate this manually is almost impossible. You need tools that can analyze your historical data and report how your environment has grown over time, how it stands today and how it will look in the future. Another area that further complicates resource calculations is spare capacity. If you are using High Availability in your environment, which most companies do, you have to maintain sufficient spare capacity to handle the load when host failures occur. So, you need a pool of resources that is unused at all times so you have enough resource capacity to handle VMs from failed hosts. Trying to factor spare capacity into your resource calculations can quickly get complicated, having a tool that can do this for you can make it a much easier exercise.

Today I wanted to highlight another white paper that I wrote for SolarWinds that is titled “Storage I/O Bottlenecks in a Virtual Environment”. I enjoyed writing this one the most as it digs really deep into the technical aspects of storage I/O bottlenecks. This white paper covers topics such as the effects of storage I/O bottlenecks, common causes, how to identify them and how to solve them. Below is an excerpt from this white paper, you can register and read the full paper over at SolarWinds website.

There are several key statistics that should be monitored on your storage subsystem related to bottlenecks but perhaps the most important is latency. Disk latency is defined as the time it takes for the selected disk sector to be positioned under the drive head so it can be read or written to. Once a VM makes a read or write to its virtual disk that request must follow a path to make its way from the guest OS to the physical storage device. A bottleneck can occur at different points along that path, there are different statistics that can be used to help pinpoint where the bottleneck is occurring in the path. The below figure illustrates the path that data takes to get from the VM to the storage device.

The storage I/O goes through the operating system as it normally would and makes its way to the device driver for the virtual storage adapter. From there it goes through the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) of the hypervisor which emulates the virtual storage adapter that the guest sees. It travels through the VMkernel and through a series of queues before it gets to the device driver for the physical storage adapter that is in the host. For shared storage it continues out the host on the storage network and makes its way to its final destination which is the physical storage device. Total guest latency is measured at the point where the storage I/O enters the VMkernel up to the point where it arrives at the physical storage device.

The total guest latency (GAVG/cmd as it is referred to in the esxtop utility) is measured in milliseconds and consists of the combined values of kernel latency (KAVG/cmd) plus device latency (DAVG/cmd). The kernel latency includes all the time that I/O spends in the VMkernel before it exits to the destination storage device. Queue latency (QAVG/cmd) is a part of the kernel latency but also measured independently. The device latency is the total amount of time that I/O spends in the VMkernel physical driver code and the physical storage device. So when I/O leaves the VMkernel and goes to the storage device this is the amount of time that it takes to get there and return. A guest latency value that is too high is a pretty clear indication that you have a storage I/O bottleneck that can cause severe performance issues. Once total guest latency exceeds 20ms you will notice the performance of your VMs suffer, as it approaches 50ms your VMs will become unresponsive.

Full paper including information on the key statistics related to storage I/O bottlenecks available here…

Continuing from my post on Monday which covered the white paper that I did for SolarWinds on the top 5 management challenges with virtualized environments, I wanted to highlight another of the white papers that focuses on one of those specific management challenges. This white paper is titled “Performance Management in a Virtual Environment” and covers how performance management differs from traditional physical environments, how to get started with performance management and knowing where to look and how to interpret the many statistics that are unique to virtual environments. The white paper also includes a table that details 13 key statistics that you need to pay attention to in virtual environments. Below is an excerpt from the first paper, you can register and read the full paper over at SolarWinds website.

So you’ve implemented virtualization and don’t know where to start when it comes to monitoring the performance of your virtual environment. In a traditional non-virtual environment you monitor performance through the guest operating system which is installed directly on the server hardware. Typically a centralized monitoring system relies on an agent installed on the guest OS or built-in components like Windows WMI to read performance statistics from the server. With virtualization this type of performance monitoring is no longer effective; the reason is the guest operating system is no longer seeing the physical hardware of the host. Instead it is seeing virtual hardware that is emulated by the hypervisor so performance statistics that are measured inside the guest OS are not an accurate reflection of the physical hardware of the host. As a result you need a monitoring application that is aware of the virtualization layer and can also measure the statistics that are unique to virtual environments.

Virtualization built-in performance monitoring tools like VMware’s vCenter Server can provide raw performance statistics for the virtual environment but doesn’t help you interpret them. The information returned by vCenter Server can be overwhelming and knowing what to look for and what the numbers mean can be difficult. Additionally vCenter Server is designed to mainly monitor and report at the virtualization layer and doesn’t extend to far into the guest OS layer so it does not provide a complete monitoring solution. There are hundreds of performance statistics that are generated by ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server that cover many different areas. Not all of these statistics are useful in most cases and if you tried to monitor them all you would be quickly overwhelmed. Some statistics are only useful in certain situations such as troubleshooting a resource bottleneck but there are others that can provide key indicators to the overall health of your vSphere environment and should be constantly monitored. Some statistics are specific to hosts and others only apply to virtual machines, the below table lists some of the more important statistics that you should focus on when monitoring vSphere.

Full paper including the table detailing key performance metrics available here…

The polls will open next week for the annual VMware/virtualization top blog voting, so if you want to make sure your site is included make sure I have your blog listed on my vLaunchPad. This year will be a bit different, instead of just a top 25 we’ll also have categories kind of like they do at many awards shows. Some of the categories will be Best New Blog, Best Storage Blog, Blogger You Most Want To Meet, etc. I’m still playing with the categories so sound off in the comments if you have any ideas.

The iPad is becoming more and more popular in the enterprise, and not just for mobile workers. There is also a slew of iPad applications for VMware admins.

Many IT vendors see the iPad’s potential and are developing iPad apps that can manage their traditional hardware and software products. Xsigo Systems, for instance, has a very nice app called Xsigo XMS , which manages virtual I/O through the company’s XMS servers. There is also an iPad application called SiMU Pro that manages Cisco Systems Inc.’s Unified Computing System.

In addition, there are several iPad applications that can supplement the traditional VMware admin toolkit, including the vSphere Client and Secure Shell (SSH) applications. With the right iPad applications, VMware admins will reach a new level of management flexibility that’s not possible with traditional desktops and laptops.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Top iPad applications for VMware management

II. Applications for remotely connecting to hosts and workstations

III. Top iPad applications for VMware networking

IV. General purpose iPad apps for VMware admins

I. TOP IPAD APPLICATIONS FOR VMWARE MONITORING AND MAINTENANCEWith the top iPad applications for infrastructure management, VMware admins can control basic functions, such as powering virtual machines (VMs) on and off and using vMotion.

These iPad apps mimic some of the functionality of the vSphere Client and service console, but they aren’t a full-fledge replacement. Even so, these iPad applications allow VMware admins to perform key virtualization tasks without a full-scale computer.

It’s John Troyer’s birthday, for those that do not know John he’s VMware’s dynamic, social media and community person who will give you the shirt of his back if you ask. For those who do know him, well you probably already know this. I know John very well and he has graciously written the foreword on both my books. Two years ago I arranged a special surprise involving dozens of bloggers and community people for John in appreciation for everything he has done for the community, be sure and check out the videos to see his reaction to the surprise.

ESXi 4.1 brought changes to the patching process. Previously, the Host Update utility — an application included with the vSphere Client — could patch ESXi 4.0 hosts. VMware removed Host Update from ESXi 4.1, presumably to encourage users to upgrade to paid versions that are managed and patched with vCenter Server’s Update Manager. As a result, the only method left to patch the free version of ESXi is with the vihostupdate command-line utility, which is included in the vSphere Command-Line Interface (CLI).

Before using this method, it’s important to understand how the patches work and where to find them.

VMware announced that ESXi will be the exclusive hypervisor of vSphere 5. As such, we will likely see a greater adoption of VMware’s smaller hypervisor.

ESXi can be either embedded on a server (boot from flash) or installed on existing servers, using the Installable version. The free version of ESXi, the VMware vSphere Hypervisor, includes support for virtual symmetric multiprocessing (vSMP) and thin provisioning. No additional features are included, which means the free version of ESXi cannot be managed by vCenter Server, because it does not include a vCenter Server agent. To gain additional features and a vCenter Server agent, you need to upgrade your ESXi license.

The ESXi installation uses about 5 GB of space. Any remaining space on the drive is automatically formatted as a Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) partition. The hypervisor needs roughly 32 MB; the additional space is used for VMware Tools as well as swap and core dump partitions.

If you already have existing licenses for ESX, you can also choose to deploy ESXi in place of ESX on a server. Simply download ESXi installable. Install it and then license it with vCenter Server, as you would a traditional ESX server. Follow the steps below to install and configure ESXi.

Host resources are a precious commodity in virtual infrastructures. To maximize your return on investment and the benefits of virtualization, you must make the most of them.

VMware vCenter CapacityIQ reports on CPU, memory and disk I/O usage, which enables you to right-size vSphere infrastructure and prevent common virtualization challenges, such as virtual machine (VM) sprawl.

CapacityIQ is available as a standalone product and is also bundled with vCenter Operations, VMware’s new operations management software. At some point, CapacityIQ and Operations may merge into a single product. Until then, here’s what VMware’s resource-reporting and planning tool can do.

The capabilities of vCenter CapacityIQ
VCenter CapacityIQ is a pre-built virtual appliance, deployed from an Open Virtualization File format, so it can be exported directly into vCenter Server. VCenter CapacityIQ focuses on three areas in vSphere: